<nettime> The CNN Bureau Bureau Havan

["davidg." <davidg@xs4all.nl>]

Don't be Deceived by the New Voice of America
                      The CNN Bureau in Havana

In recent media bulletins and satellite journals there have been 
numerous articles prizing Ted Turner's alleged heroism in defying the 
Helms/Burton law by installing the CNN Havana Bureau. Lets not  be 
deceived.
Since the Cuban government has been forced, not by political but by 
economic pressure,  to accept a CNN bureau in Havana. CNN's task is to 
produce and transmit a continuous supply of unmitigated negative 
information from this impoverished Caribbean paradise. Bad news is good 
news on television. And providing bad news is CNN's main job from 
Havana. 
>From Ted Roosevelt's invasion of Colombia to snatch the Panama canal in 
1903 to the assassination of Chilean president Salvador Allenede in 
1973, the catalogue of American interventions in the region are both to 
numerous and  to depressing to inventorise once again. But times change 
and so do strategies 

The propaganda machinery from the old (USIS) United States Information 
Service, that through The Voice of America, has bombarded the former 
eastern block as well as the so called "backyard" of the united states, 
Central and South America throughout the last half century is now 
supplemented by more effective and sophisticated ways of achieving their 
goals. The American government has learned through the last decade to 
how to utilize the apparently independent source of information, that is 
Ted Turner's cable news network.
To take just one example, large-scale prostitution is one of the bad 
news stories continuously reported on CNN. With emotive images of young 
girls cruising the streets of Havana peddling their bodies for  hard 
currency. But the reasons behind this phenomena are never mentioned let 
alone analyzed. The world has a short memory. Lets not forget that it is 
the clumsy policies that continues to this day to characterize American 
state department that has forced Cuba  into this position.

Make no mistake if the American government really wanted to prevent 
CNN's dispatches they surely have the means  to do so. If the claws of 
the US administration can successfully discourage the investments  
European and Canadian corporations in Cuba through the Helms Burton law 
there is no reason why that shouldn't be equally effective at home.

Raul Marroquin
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